


The Simple Pleasures

by Sunchales



Category: Northwest Smith - C. L. Moore
Genre: Drunkenness, Gen, Nature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21844945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunchales/pseuds/Sunchales
Summary: Yarol discovers—or is it rediscovers?—something he has missed in his largely dissolute life.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Simple Pleasures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quillori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/gifts).



> This fic contains references to alcohol, a mention or two of sex, and a viewpoint character who expresses skepticism of the story of the Garden of Eden.

Venus was a planet of contradictions, Yarol observed through the _segir_ -born haze in his mind. Any explorer, sober or drunk, would notice the same of Earth, but Yarol felt the paradoxical nature of his native planet weigh more heavily on his heart. He wondered if Northwest Smith found the comparatively predictable drylands and deserts of Mars preferable to the melding of steel cities and green hills to his own home world. For some reason, Yarol had never asked him. 

The contradiction most readily apparent to Yarol as he stumbled from one saloon to the next was how Venus contained both renowned, civilization-bred beauty, in its people and its architecture alike, and the pure roughness of untamed nature. Most Venusians who lived within the spiraling white towers and glimmering skyscrapers of the planet’s refined cities remained willingly ignorant of the massive primitive forests and lakes that burdened and surrounded the five continents, like the one he trod this night. For that matter, he supposed they also knew nothing of the environments of the other two planets or any of the moons that traded with Venus, but that thought just barely penetrated the fog that enfolded his brain as he tripped over a moss-covered rock and tumbled to the wet ground.

Within moments, he got up, clutching his head, and staggered to the nearest bar, which would be only his second of the night but would still allow him to further imperil himself. When he pushed past the doorway’s bamboo-reinforced red fiber curtains, he walked toward the counter, which dominated the front room in a semicircle, as was the typical Venusian style. He may have entered at the wrong time—rather than the crowd he expected, only a few patrons occupied the stools and booths. He wanted to take note of them, but something compelled him to make a beeline for the counter and douse himself even further.

He tried to sit down, but he narrowly missed the red velvet swiveling stool beside him. The bartender, who appeared to be a middle-aged Earth woman with an orange bouffant, pulled him up before he could hit the floor and crack the mug still in his hand. She lifted him and set him sitting right in front of her.

“Yarol, is it?” she said. “I seem to recall you haunting this establishment. You ought to be more careful.” She glanced at the individuals sitting in the booth nearest the door. “Your enemies may be watching. And I’m afraid I can’t give you any more tonight.” The woman plucked the mug from his grasp, looked inside it with a wince, and set it down. “Even here, the forces of the law would penalize me.”

Had he indeed been here previously? Perhaps this bar was more reputable than some others along the Venusian swamps, it seemed. Well, he had no comment on that. He could barely comment on anything.

“I hope you expect to sleep here,” she continued. “You are in no condition to go back outside, where you could only pose a danger to yourself and others. Ordinarily, I’d charge you for a room, especially since I’m not too kind to those who drink themselves into a stupor on my property, but tonight, I am feeling generous.”

When Yarol woke up the next morning, the first thing he did was clutch for the mug of ale. His fingers closed around the empty air. The strange lightness he felt at its absence leapt immediately to a thrill of hope. The days when he would wake up and _curse_ the mug’s absence were gone. At least he could say that much. He could also say that, for weal or for woe, his head remained free of pain, meaning that he now required still greater quantities of liquor to damage himself in this way.

What he couldn’t say, however, was what business the man lying in the twin bed next to his own had being in the room. At least, he assumed it was a man. The dark green robe around the figure’s body made exactly who or what he—if it was a he—was difficult to determine. 

But the figure stirred, inspiring Yarol to open his eyes wider. The person in the next bed—and Yarol noticed that he and the stranger were the room’s only occupants—then stretched and pulled down the robe’s hood, revealing a dark brown face that looked masculine to Yarol. 

The hooded stranger blinked and opened his eyes. In an instant, the individual saved Yarol from the embarrassment of having to guess the correct tongue to use by offering the greeting instead.

“Excuse me, traveler. You seem down on your luck. May I offer you a path to something pleasant, something better than the haze of the bottle?”

Until very recently, Yarol considered only the favors of a suggestible bedfellow superior to the melodies of drunkenness, and he had no way of knowing whether this stranger was proposing such an eventuality. To avoid the appearance of forwardness, he asked, “What do you mean?”

The stranger turned to a sitting position and slipped his feet into his boots—notably, these were not spaceman’s boots but something Yarol had never seen before. “I am a tour guide to some of the more remote parts of this planet. You are yourself a Venusian, correct?”

Yarol nodded.

“Ah, but have you seen every part of your beloved planet?”

He pondered the matter. “No, I suppose I haven’t.” Clearly this man knew nothing of Yarol’s exploits with Smith—although the notion that Venus itself held mysteries unfamiliar to Yarol, a true son of the planet, rankled at his heart. 

“Then come with me.” The hooded stranger extended a hand, but Yarol declined to take it.

“Do not be alarmed,” the man in the hood continued. “My name is Ruhgr. I am a tour guide to the swamp of Avelones. It is where I make my home, and it is a balm for the weary soul.”

Yarol took the stranger by the hand but felt his side for his pocket knife.

Hours later, after Yarol followed Rughr to the flier parked outside, the hooded man flew his guest over the towers and houses of civilization and to the edge of a sprawling marshland. The vehicle descended, and both men disembarked.

“Now we board the boat.”

Right before him, at the edge of the water, Yarol saw a tiny craft, just barely large enough to hold two adult humans. Rughr picked up the pole that lay beside the boat and stepped into the craft, and Yarol followed. Without hesitation, he grabbed Rughr by the shoulders and steadied himself behind the other man. Rughr lifted the pole on high and struck the lavender water with it, and Yarol looked up and around his new environs, one remaining place yet unconquered by those who had tamed outer space.

As Rughr poled on, Yarol saw that the water was not merely lavender but fraught with sparkles. Pale blue reeds stood up from below, caressing the prodigiously long branches and pale green leaves of the burnt-sienna trees that girded the water. All around, cries ranging from the piercing to the sepulchral reverberated through the air.

Yarol looked around for the sources of these noises. To his right, he saw a small red-furred creature dart out of a tree and into the water; to his left, a heavy-scaled lizard-like organism with burning yellow eyes slid from the lavender depths and onto one of the muddy banks. When he looked above him, he noticed birds with gold and scarlet feathers and their blue-and-green companions flying overhead, sometimes diving down to scoop up prey in their pointed, cavernous beaks. More stirrings came from the willows, and more shapes darted beneath the waters, and Yarol breathed in the musky yet fresh scents of the marshland.

“Tell me, fellow son of Venus, you like what the swamp has to offer, do you?”

“I do.” Here, he supposed, was something like a slice of what many Earth natives called Eden. Whenever Smith tried to explain that story to Yarol, the point seemed to fly over his head like a protesting child's rock over a spacecraft invading their home planet. What, exactly, was the appeal of lingering in a vast garden with only one intelligent companion for your entire life, and why was leaving it a punishment? Despite all efforts on his part, Smith never made the idea of lounging about outdoors with nothing to do from one day to the next sound superior to the adventures he and Yarol pursued both separately and together.

But now, something began to chip away at that resistance. No one suffered the pounding headaches and nausea of an excess of _segir_ in a place like Eden. The perils concealed beneath the beauty of an alluring bedfellow did not exist. Lords squatting in their manors did not hoard wealth; the bounty of nature was free for all who sought it.

“Well, why don’t we spend the night in my home? I make my abode not far from here. In the morning, I can return you to where you were—or we can keep going, if your schedule is so lenient.”

Such an invitation from a stranger could be dangerous. This man, however, had helped Yarol out of the misery induced by a _segir_ debauch, and could perhaps preempt more such hindrances.

“I’ll spend the night with you,” he said. “I don’t have to be anywhere tomorrow.”

That evening, after Rughr took Yarol back to his hut and started preparing for bed, Yarol climbed up the wooden steps nailed to the back of the building. From the vantage point he intended to reach, he would sit high enough to see the infinite expanse of sky above the trees and take in first the dusk and then the night. Yarol watched as the sun seemed to sink into the lavender waters, turning the heavens blood-red and indigo. Streaks of bright pink burst through the darkness. Some found the sunset on Venus garish, but Yarol always enjoyed it.

Suddenly, he felt a presence behind him. When he turned to see what it was, he gasped.

Just a short space away from him slithered a slender but lengthy serpent. Rather than move to attack him, the snake closed its lustrous black eyes and lowered its head, like a dog wanting a caress from its master.

And so, Yarol reached his hand out to pet the reptile's wedge-shaped head, and noticed that the cold, scaly, green surface his fingers skimmed looked pale and sickly. Shades of light green always pleased his eye (he recalled them enjoying a perennial popularity in Martian markets for reasons unbeknownst to him, and as a result, he associated them with the pan-cultural delights of the area), but the coat this creature sported reminded him of a space freighter that had cruised the interplanetary byways for a decade too many.

Then the snake squeezed its eyelids again, and the skin peeled and crumbled away under Yarol's touch. Moments later, the reptile he stroked boasted a new coat of sizzling scarlet jagged with blazing electric blue stripes. This serpent wore colors to rival the sunset.

When the serpent opened its void-like eyes once more, it stared directly into Yarol's. In its gaze, Yarol felt an intimacy deeper than any he had known while wooing a fellow bar patron, tumbling in bed with another cruiser of three planets, or haggling with a merchant. Maybe that Eden story had gotten it backwards, and the snake was the real friend of mankind.

 _And if I were still stinking drunk, I would have missed this_ , he thought, running his fingers down the rest of the snake's body.


End file.
